The trend of setting up pro-Gaza camps on university ground has spread from the US. Joe Biden has described the protests as part of a “ferocious surge” in anti-Semitism, in comments seen by many as a call for action to shut the camps down.
Mr Sunak is not expected to go that far, and is understood to think protests can continue as long as the is zero-tolerance for anti-Semitism.
The Prime Minister and Gillian Keegan, the Education Secretary, will address university leaders after students set up protest camps at UK universities including UCL, Bristol and Goldsmiths.
Speaking on Wednesday, the Prime Minister said: “Universities should be places of rigorous debate but also bastions of tolerance and respect for every member of their community.
“A vocal minority on our campuses are disrupting the lives and studies of their fellow students and, in some cases, propagating outright harassment and anti-Semitic abuse. That has to stop.”
Jewish students have said they feel “cut off” from university life by protests that have gone on since Israel’s war with Hamas began in October.
Earlier this week, a spokesperson for the University of Cambridge Jewish Society warned that the creation of the King’s College encampment risked contributing to “a toxic and hostile atmosphere for Jewish students.”
The University of Oxford Jewish Society said it was “deeply concerning to see the increasingly hateful language emanating from these protests.”
